


Ain't all that

by Butterfish



Series: Two Sides [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Coming Out, Flirting, M/M, Romance, Sixth Form, Teenagers, activist, in the closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 21:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfish/pseuds/Butterfish
Summary: Alfred is in the closet and not sure how to deal with things. If only he could be more like Arthur - free spirited and open.





	Ain't all that

I think about everything. No really,  _everything_. From the moment I wake up my brain is working overtime. It’s totally random, like figuring out how the Titanic disaster could’ve been avoided or if humans will ever develop a sixth finger. Sometimes it’s nerve wrecking, like when will I die? Most of the time it is just my anxiety picking up. As I walk to school, it shouts,

“Do not look up because if you look up then people think you’re looking at them and then they think you have the audacity to look at them and judge them when you look like a piece of trash and why do you even waste the oxygen in this city perhaps if there was an apocalypse you wouldn’t deserve to survive.”

So yeah, as you can imagine I don’t have great self esteem. Yet I’m a bit up my own ass. I feel like years of having judged myself has made me very self-aware. I know what I’m good at and what I’m bad at and what I should say in any given situation. It makes me a bit of a master of things in life other people have not even considered by the time they retire. It’s a weird Catch 22 - I think I am the worst person alive and yet the best. I’m sure a therapist would have something interesting to say about this.

The thing is that no one else knows. See, having low self esteem and being the most popular guy at school? - those two just don’t fit together. When people look at me, they see a tall, broad success. Someone who doesn’t even have to try to get people to like him. And it’s true, that’s part of what worrying has done to me - I know how to give people what they want. That’s my Alfred-charm, as they call it. I call it my know-how. I know how to make people feel exactly what I want them to feel. I’m kind of a master manipulator.

They once started this group in high school. It was meant to be for those struggling with, well,  _whatever_. They put posters all over the school. Divorced parents? Come chat! Friend slept with your ex? We have a shoulder to cry on! Need someone to listen? Chat, chat, and chat away. I watched them through the crack in the door for a few minutes. I was nervous to enter, but they all seemed to do just what the posters had advertised - they sat in a circle and one by one they chat, chat, and chatted. About parents and friends and exes and school and yes, really  _whatever_. But the moment I walked in they all quieted down. No one said a word. Even the teacher leading the session snapped his mouth shut and sent me an odd look.

“Are you lost?” he finally asked.

“Is this where you lend an ear?” I asked. I was being honest. But instead I got a nasty snicker from a few students, and the teacher’s face reddened.

“This isn’t a joke, Mr Jones. Please see yourself out.”

Because how could I need someone to listen?

I will tell you the truth. Are you ready for it? 100%? You won’t judge me, even if you think I’m being ridiculous? Are you certain? I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. The truth is the truth whether you like it or not. And the truth is that I abso-fucking-lutely  _hate_ myself.

I have always hated myself. Or, maybe I haven’t always  _hated_  myself, but I’ve certainly always disliked myself. Since I was a kid I’ve had this uneasy feeling inside of me, as if I’ll never be good enough. Not even good enough for others. I soon realised there were expectations I could never meet, like Dad wanting me to join the navy (uh, please, I can’t swim!) or my brother begging me to start a Youtube gaming channel, become popular, and give him all my money (jeez, Matthew, get in there yourself!). I’ve never measured myself against other people’s expectations. But my own have always been out of reach. And you know what? Disappointing myself hurts me more than disappointing others.

I hated my body. So I exercised and trained and ran and cycled and played ball and climbed and did some boxing. But even as girls looked my way and my locker in public school flooded with love letters, I couldn’t stand the guy staring back in the mirror. I hated my brain. Because I couldn’t remember things or grasp large theoretic concepts. I did well at what people considered smart subjects - I scored high grades in maths and physics and biology, but I couldn’t read between the lines of a poem or create a sculptor in art. And they said, it doesn’t matter. But I felt stupid, because sure I could outrun them all on the field, but I couldn’t even understand when the smart kids made fun of me behind my back.

So I stayed up at night and read every book Matthew owned, and I went to museums on weekends to look at art, and I even bought a sketchbook and sat in the park and really tried,  _rrrrrreeeaaallllyyy_  tried to make something more than stick figures. And I failed. And I grew more resentful with myself.

But most of all I hated my emotions. Especially the one emotion I got every day. When I was younger, it was dull. Like a radio playing in your next door neighbour’s kitchen. There yet barely existing. The older I got, though, the louder it got. That Monday after PE, as I sat on the steps outside the gym waiting for Dad to pick me up in his car, I saw a guy across the street watching me, and the emotion went from a radio to a pair of loudspeakers, one on each side of me, blasting at full volume.

Arthur was my height, but smaller - as were most people, to be fair. He was wearing a chequered shirt and jeans and sneakers which he had drawn skulls on and he was fiddling with his backpack which was covered in rainbows. But our eyes caught sight of one another, and for a few minutes we just sat, each on our side of the street, and stared. I knew he knew me. I mean, everyone in high school knows me. But I wasn’t sure if he knew that I knew him. Arthur was the kind of guy you knew if you had to know him which may sound odd but as an LGBT activist, his face was plastered in the school magazine’s advice column every month. And I am sure no one expected me to read it. But I did.

Because I can tame my body and my mind but not my emotions. Yet his words gave me some leash to strap onto them to hold them back. His advice made me believe I did not have to hate myself forever. Even if at that point in time, I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out.

So we watched each other. And it was warm. My hair was already wet from the shower after PE, but the heat was making my skin boil again and sweat was rolling down my back in steady streams, making my clothes stick to me. And I think he looked me up and down, because the sides of his lips twisted into a smile that made his dimples show shortly, and before he looked away I swear he winked.

“You ain’t all that,” he called at me as he continued to roam around inside his backpack.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I had heard enough smart comments to know it couldn’t be all good. So I straightened up and huffed at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you ain’t all that,” he said and looked at me. “I mean, you’ve got most of it. But you’re not fully there.”

Honestly? I was pissed. I thought, who’s he to judge what I am and what I am not? I know I am not all that. I didn’t work my whole life on bettering myself to be told that I could still do better. So I stood up and gave him a look up and down as well, slowly to ensure my point got across, and I said, “Oh yeah? Well, you ain’t all that either.”

“Oh yeah?” Arthur repeated. “Well, I think I’m the whole package. What you got that I haven’t?”

I mean, but for the obvious? I huffed at him again and shook my head. “Well, I’m not walking down that road with you.”

“No? ‘fraid?”

“Of nothing,” I said with confidence, “What makes you think I’m missing anything?”

“Maybe the way you’ve been looking at me,” he answered.

I felt myself blush. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said and smiled.

“Maybe you’re wrong on that one.”

“Maybe I am,” he said, “but that’d be too bad, though.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Luckily, I heard a car start rolling downhill and when I looked up, Dad’s silver Mercedes was waiting a few cars up from where I was stood. I looked back at Arthur, but he seemed occupied with his bag once again, so I just shook my head and started walking up the street.

“What, you’re not going to offer a ride?” he asked.

Honestly, I was not. But honestly, I was not going to deny him one either. I am not sure why. Maybe because the void inside of me was begging for something, someone, to fill it, even if just for a second. So I asked Dad, and he gestured for both of us to get in the back, and once he knew where Arthur was going, we hit the road in silence.

“I’m a friend from school,” Arthur finally said, breaking the quietness.

“Oh, I’ve not seen you around before?” Dad said and looked at Arthur in the mirror.

Arthur smiled at me and clucked his tongue, “Oh, Al here” (yes, he said Al, no one ever calls me Al, not even family!) “Oh, Al here,” he said, “he’s embarrassed about having a friend like me.”

I felt myself go warm again, but before I could protest, Dad shook his head. “Alfred, you know we don’t have a problem with you having friends over. You can come any time you want, Arthur.”

“Thanks, sir,” Arthur said perfectly polite, and he cocked his head to the side as he looked at me.

I ensured to keep my eyes on the floor until we reached midtown and Arthur asked to be let out. “Well,” he said as he slipped out the car. He held onto the open door and reached in, as if to grab my hand to shake it, and I felt that I had to, so I took his hand in mine and shook it awkwardly. I am sure Dad was laughing quietly. “Been a pleasure, Al,” and with that he left.

I looked in my hand at the crumbled up flyer. It said cheesy things like ‘Need to talk to someone?’ and ‘We will lend a shoulder to cry on’ and ‘Come and chat, chat, chat’, but on the back, the ink still wet, Arthur had crossed over the word ‘Everyone’ so it read: ‘Alfred welcome in the LGBT club’ and he had signed it with to X’es.

I licked my lips and clenched my hand to a fist. The void inside of me seemed to clench just as tightly together, as if it begged to vanish.

Perhaps I could learn to hate myself a little less.


End file.
